When I saw the real attorney in court, the one whose name had been stolen to ruin my life, I lost my composure. I looked straight at him and told him to go to hell. It took years to get to that moment. And by then, my whole life savings were gone.
My name is Mr. Ko. I’ve been married for 59 years. Hard as it was for me, what I put my wife through breaks my heart.
For two years, we were like strangers because of this thing. I couldn’t even face her. I had to ask her for money. I went through my savings first, and then we went through hers.
It started with a phone call. “Hey, you are owed $30,000,” the man said. “I can get it for you. ”
I asked what he was talking about.
He explained that one of my time shares had been sold, and the bank held the money, but they couldn’t release it without the title to the land. He said if we could get the title, we could clear it. I told him I didn’t have any of those papers. “Don’t worry about it,” he said.
“Give me $1,500, and I can get it. ”
I was so eager. My time shares had been sitting on the market for so long. I wanted out.
When someone tells you they have a buyer, and all you have to do is pay a fee to get your money, you believe them. But it was never $1,500. They kept coming back. Sometimes they’d wait a week.
Sometimes three weeks. Towards the end, it was like a game — every single week they’d call or text. If I didn’t answer the phone, they’d text. They’d wear my phone out.
They kept asking me to pay more. And I kept paying. I was trying to get money from anywhere. I was draining my business to pay them.
I was taking money from my wife. It was like a disease. It was like being hooked on drugs. You can’t get off of it.
And every time I felt that little rush of hope that this time we were going to get our money — that high kept me hooked. Sometimes they’d send me to a title company. One was in Clarksville, Texas. I drove all the way over there.
The building was abandoned. They sent me to a bank in Dallas to meet a certain person. He wasn’t there. Nobody had ever heard of him.
I’d call back and ask, “Man, what are y’all trying to do to me? ”
They’d just laugh and lie to me some more. My wife wanted to back out long before I did. I should have listened to her.
I was the one who ran our finances. I saw my whole life savings go out the door. The first time I believed I was talking to a real lawyer, someone named David Eaton, I felt like I finally had an advocate. I looked him up online.
He was a real attorney in St. Petersburg, Florida. He had a real phone number. I thought, this man is going to help me get my money back from the scammers.
But the “David Eaton” I was talking to was a fake. Someone had stolen his identity. The real David Eaton had never spoken a word to me in his life. I was being scammed again.
This time, I didn’t even know it. The real David Eaton only found out because a friend of his who worked for the Florida Bar called him one day. Part of the friend’s job was handling complaint calls from victims of shady lawyers. David’s name kept coming up in the context of a time share scam.
The friend called him as a courtesy: “You’re not under investigation, but someone is pretending to be you and scamming the public. ”
David had no idea. Neither did I. Neither did any of the other victims.
The scammers used the names of real local attorneys. They’d plop their names into Gmail accounts and give out phone numbers that were off by a digit. When victims Googled the name, they saw a real lawyer who did real estate work in Orlando. They thought they were safe.
They never thought to verify. I certainly didn’t. I only finally understood what had happened to me when a detective contacted me. She had a foreign name and an accent, and the scammers had trained me not to trust anyone.
They’d told me, “Don’t trust them. Trust me. I am the attorney. I am going to help you.
”
So when the detective called, I was suspicious. I told her I was busy. I made excuses. I hung up.
She kept trying. She called my family. They had a suspicion I was being scammed, but by then I was in too deep. I had already sent so much money that I couldn’t stop.
I kept believing in the fake attorney. I kept sending more. By the time I finally called that detective back, I had been getting scammed since 2011. It was 2017 when she first reached out to me.
Six years. I had been lying to myself for six years. I lost my business. The doors were shut because I couldn’t pay the rent.
I lost my house. I destroyed relationships with friends I haven’t spoken to since. I can’t. I feel too ashamed.
When I finally spoke with the real people investigating, the detectives became my lifeline. One of them pulled me up out of the pit. I couldn’t have done it without her. When I realized what I’d done, she contacted the Texas Department of Public Safety and the Texas Rangers.
They came and took my phone, my computer, and everything off of it. They built a case along with the receipts. You want to know how many receipts there are for half a million dollars? It was a box about that big.
A massive box full of proof of every payment I made, every lie I fell for. I walked into that courtroom and I testified against the men who took everything from me. I told the judge exactly how bad it was. I told him how much this hurt me and my family, what I did to my friends.
I told him how this greedy habit destroyed my marriage. I looked the men right in the eye as I said it. I told the judge I was mad. I was humiliated.
I think that’s why they didn’t let me stay in the courtroom after I testified. They walked me in, I spoke, and they walked me out. I think these men were given somewhere around seven years. For $2.
2 million. I thought that was pretty light. For all that they stole, for all the lives they destroyed, I thought it was light. At this point, I don’t think any of the victims will ever see that money again.
It’s gone. But I’m at peace with the men right now. I actually prayed for them, and I forgave them. Not because they deserve it.
Because the judgment that God is going to put on them for what they did to me is going to be horrible.
